Trump Asked the Liberian President Where He Learned His "Beautiful English." The Answer Is American Slavery.
As Trump's diplomatic blunder goes viral, it reveals how completely America has erased its own colonial project in West Africa.
President Trump made headlines this week when he complimented Liberian President Joseph Boakai on his "beautiful English" during a White House lunch with African leaders. "Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?" Trump asked, seemingly amazed that the leader of a West African nation could speak English fluently.
The moment was peak American ignorance on full display, emblematic of how thoroughly we've erased our own history of empire. Because the story of why Liberians speak English is about how America created its own African colony, built on the backs of freed slaves and sustained through a century of exploitation that would make any European colonizer proud.
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The American Colonization Society's True Motives
Most Americans, if they know anything about Liberia at all, might remember something vague about it being founded by freed slaves. The sanitized version goes like this: benevolent white Americans, concerned about the welfare of freed Black people, helped them return to Africa where they could live freely. It's a nice story. It's also mostly bullshit.
The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, was primarily about white anxiety. The organization brought together an unlikely coalition of slaveholders, abolitionists, and politicians who agreed that free Black Americans didn't belong in the United States. For slaveholders, free Black communities represented a dangerous example to enslaved people. For some abolitionists, colonization seemed like the only way to solve America's "race problem." For politicians, it was a way to avoid the harder questions about equality and justice.
The ACS sold colonization as humanitarian work, complete with Christian missionary rhetoric about bringing "civilization" to Africa. But the society's records reveal their true goal of draining the United States of free Black people while maintaining the institution of slavery. They wanted to have it both ways, keeping slavery while appearing morally righteous.
Between 1822 and 1867, the ACS transported about 10,000 Black Americans to what would become Liberia. Many went willingly, seeking escape from American racism, while others were pressured or coerced. But the founding myth conveniently leaves out that these American settlers immediately began replicating the same systems of oppression they had fled.
Americo-Liberian Dominance Over Indigenous Populations
When freed American slaves arrived on the Liberian coast, the territory was home to roughly 1.5 million indigenous people from over 16 distinct ethnic groups, including the Kru and Grebo peoples, each with their own sophisticated political and social systems.
The American settlers, who became known as Americo-Liberians, quickly asserted dominance over these populations. They controlled the coast, trade routes, and resources. They forced indigenous leaders to sign treaties, often at gunpoint, surrendering vast stretches of land in exchange for trade goods, weapons, and rum worth an estimated $300.
Under the leadership of figures like Jehudi Ashmun, a white ACS agent, the colony aggressively expanded through military force. Ashmun used coercion and violence to annex tribal lands, exploit commercial opportunities, and extract resources for export to the United States and Europe. The settlers built their new society on a foundation of indigenous labor, forcing native peoples to work on infrastructure projects, government farms, and private plantations.
The Americo-Liberians had learned well from their former oppressors. They created their own version of the plantation system, complete with forced labor and racial hierarchies. The only difference was that now they were on top.
Liberian Independence and Continued Exploitation
When Liberia declared independence in 1847, they were trying to escape British interference with their slave trade operations, because America's "free" colony was still trafficking enslaved people well into the 19th century.
The new nation inherited all the structures the ACS had built. About 15,000 Americo-Liberians dominated a population of over a million indigenous people. They monopolized political power, controlled the economy, and maintained their supremacy through a system that one African American visitor in the 1880s compared to the relationship between former slaves and Southern whites.
Indigenous peoples were forced to pay taxes in labor, working on roads, public buildings, and private estates. The government exported workers to Spanish colonies, essentially operating a state-sponsored labor trafficking operation.
For over a century, this American-created aristocracy ruled Liberia with the same iron fist their ancestors had experienced in the American South. Ten of Liberia's first 26 presidents were born in the United States. The capital, Monrovia, was named after James Monroe. The flag looked like a knockoff American flag. English was the official language, imposed by American colonizers and maintained by their descendants.
The 1929 Labor Scandal
The whole system nearly collapsed in 1929 when the international community discovered that the government was operating a massive forced labor scheme. The Liberian Labor Scandal exposed how President Charles D.B. King's administration was shipping indigenous workers to Spanish plantations under conditions that a League of Nations investigation found "scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading."
When international pressure forced King to resign, though, it didn't end Americo-Liberian dominance. That system persisted until 1980, when a military coup led by indigenous sergeant Samuel Doe finally overthrew the American-created elite. The violence that followed, including Liberia's devastating civil wars, can be traced directly back to the colonial structures the ACS established over 150 years earlier.
America's Forgotten Colonial Legacy
Remembering Liberia means confronting uncomfortable truths about the American empire. It means acknowledging that our "anti-colonial" founders were perfectly willing to engage in colonization when it served their interests, and recognizing that American settlers could be just as brutal as any European colonizer.
Most importantly, it means understanding that the language President Boakai speaks so "beautifully" isn't a testament to American benevolence. English became Liberia's official language through conquest.
Trump's clueless question exposes how thoroughly we've sanitized our own history of empire. We tell ourselves stories about American exceptionalism while forgetting the colonies we created, the peoples we displaced, and the systems of extraction we built.
The next time someone praises America's anti-colonial heritage, remember Liberia. Remember that we didn't just inherit empire from the British, we built our own. And we've spent the last two centuries pretending it never happened.
But here's the grim reality: stories like America's forgotten colonial project in Liberia are disappearing from public consciousness faster than ever.
Right now, educational publishers are scrubbing references to American colonialism from textbooks. University courses on American imperialism are being defunded or eliminated entirely. Even basic facts about the American Colonization Society are vanishing from curricula, dismissed as "too controversial" or "anti-American."
Without independent voices documenting these buried histories, Trump's ignorance becomes the norm.
The reality is stark: we need Black-owned platforms promoting our own historical research, resources we control that can't be defunded when they expose uncomfortable truths about American empire.
Right now, less than 4% of my followers are paid subscribers. What could we accomplish with more support?
🌍 At 5% paid subscribers: I could investigate other "forgotten" American colonial projects—from the Philippines to Haiti—before these stories are completely erased.
📚 At 10% paid subscribers: I could build comprehensive archives documenting America's hidden imperial history, preserving sources that are being quietly removed from libraries.
🎓 At 20% paid subscribers: We could develop educational materials about American colonialism for students who will never learn this history in school.
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References
McCreesh, Shawn and Zolan Kanno-Youngs. "Trump Compliments Liberian President for 'Beautiful English'." The New York Times, July 10, 2025.
Garzeawu, Moses Kollie and Wycliffe Muia. "Five things Trump should know about Liberia after he praised leader's 'good English'." BBC News, July 10, 2025.
"American Colonization Society." Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed 2025.
Vishnu, Valarmathi. "The American Colonization Society (ACS) and Liberia: Unforeseen Legacies of U.S. Intervention." Columbia Journal of History, 2024.
Christy, C. Report of the International commission of inquiry into the existence of slavery and forced labor in the republic of Liberia. International Commission of Inquiry into the Existence of Slavery and Forced Labor in the Republic of Liberia, 1931.
Gurley, Ralph Randolph. Life of Jehudi Ashmun, Late Colonial Agent in Liberia. Washington: James C. Dunn, 1835.
Wow, I had no idea. I am grateful for the knowledge and history you are sharing with those of us who have been under-educated in the US. Thank you!
Well, this column saves me a great deal of sweat on researching this subject and writing about it myself.
It is deadly accurate.
Liberia was one of only THREE independent nations in Africa until the end of colonialism: the other two were Ethiopia and Egypt. However, Ethiopia was conquered by Mussolini to avenge the defeat of Italian forces at Adowa in 1934, and Egypt was controlled by the British (and to a lesser extent, the French) because of their construction of the Suez Canal and "debts" thereof.
Everything else in Africa, including the three nations that became the Union/Republic of South Africa, were owned by white Europeans or descendants of the same.